OZ Racer plan information The PDRacers have a saga published at Duckworks about the Texas 200 (the 200 mile sailing event up the Texas Coast). It is not by a Ducker but by one impressed by them. Extract The Mighty Ducks clung to the port, with all manner and various sort of other craft abeam [...]

Peter Hyndman has made some PDRacer wallpapers that you can download for your iPhone and some other devices.

This talk is the first hour of my exposition on boat building and design. There are two more parts to come. This covers some of the background and design issues. The second is more on the building side and the last is a bit more about why the Australian (and New Zealand) wooden boat tradition is different from the Northern Hemisphere.

You can stream the talks over your internet connection or download them as a podcast.

The pics in this post are just a hint – many more on flickr – you can see them at the bottom of this page. So … What a Weekend! It is the highest I have ever sailed by far – about 2500 to 3000ft above sea level. A very nice bunch of folks. And [...]

From Rick The Canadian Nationals took place today at Summerland B.C.  with 7 boats competing for the coveted title of ‘Canadian Champion’. Pictures are posted. We had a beach start over a triangular course that was 4.2 kms long, and, well, I won. A testiment to the fine design of Michael Storer. Canadian National Puddle [...]

The trip has been and gone, however you can see the pics, the blog entries and hear the talks all online. Michael’s Schedule: NOTE: Michael would like to give as many talks and workshops as he can while over here. If your club or organization would like to have him come to your meeting and [...]

Well, this is the first real post on WordPress and it is about my trip to the USA for the Puddle Duck World titles plus a couple of months of other boating adventures. I am thinking of moving the whole site over to it in the future.  It will be more flexible than the existing [...]

The PDRacer international forum started discussing a longer version of the humble PDRacer – and I had some drawings on hand already for a 12ft version because of Bob Alston. He actually thought up the name, which I quite like. We really do recommend the OZ PDRacer for most people and you do need to [...]

It is the first boat he has built and Alex is not necessarily taking the quickest way. But he is reporting daily about his building and his ruminations on different subjects. It is a very popular boatbuilding item on the OZ woodwork forum. There have been around 13000 views of his thread already and it [...]

From Koala in Slovenia! He launched his green PDR onto a local river and invited fellow PDR builder Theodor to the launch. Neither of them has sailed before … and they had a great time. Well, we had a launch day on monday!! Beautiful weather, nice wind at first. And it was great. Theodor and [...]

But here is the set calledGoolwa, sailing with AJ, Andrea, Ted, Mike, Mike and Mike First a mood Photo from the Murray Mouth where Ted’s shack is. OK Saturday about 10am Rigging The three Ducks … one with the lug rig … in light winds it was the fastest by a long way. It has [...]

It is a bit hard finding information on my forum as the list is not very ordered, so I have attempted to fix this.There is a general building section then each boat is in alphabetical order.To see all the images you may need to become a member, however, they are a good bunch and will [...]

Ok … lug vs sprit We finally had two PDRacers with either rig option on the same stretch of water. The event was the Goolwa Wooden Boat Festival. The Sprit sail design and making method is in the plan for the PDRacer (a whole $20 for 90 pages – really a course on modern boatbuilding) [...]

Howdy, Towing behind another boat can be one of the highest loads that a small dinghy can face. Imagine if it fills with water and the mother ship is surging ahead in bad weather. So how to distribute the load into a lightweight skinned structure like the OZ PDR. OK … here is how. It [...]

A new local (Adelaide) PDRacer has been on its way for a few months now and is getting very close to being ready. The picture right is what it looked like a few weeks ago. however things have changed. You can click on the pic for a closer look Mike wrote: Bit more progress this [...]

Just got an email from Dan Taylor in Washington State, USA. He is the first to provide pics of the OZ PDR with the lug rig option. The sail looks very nice indeed and the light wind and a perfect sunny day were the other necessary ingredients. Here are his email and the pictures – [...]

The OZ hollow mast is the bee’s knees – the nicest mast we can come up with at this stage. A simple long box with the faces made of 4 planks 12mm (1/2″) thick with a taper. Easy enough to build about 35% to 40% lighter than a solid mast. Making the mast out of [...]

I’ll admit it – I am a luddite. I really think that racing boats have lost the plot – so I focus very much on simple affordable boats that go fast – rather than the flashy state of the art. I keep an eye on the State of the Art for anything that is useful [...]